Jerker

Last updated

Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of Them Dirty (commonly known simply as Jerker) is a 1986 American one-act play by Robert Chesley. The two-character play traces the relationship that develops between a disabled Vietnam veteran, J. R., and a businessman, Bert, two gay men in the beginning years of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, when a diagnosis of AIDS meant an early death from complications of the disease. Although they "meet" only through a series of telephone calls, they grow from being phone sex buddies to caring friends. The play varies from the erotic to emotionally charged moments. "Jerker" can be seen as referring to masturbation and to "tear jerker". [1] [2]

Contents

Chesley wrote the play because he believed it was "important to remove the stigma against sex that AIDS has created, and ... to remove the stigma against gay men". [3] Jerker premiered at the Celebration Theatre on October 24, 1986, [4] under the direction of Michael Kearns and starring David Stebbins and Joe Fraser. [2]

The UK Premiere of Jerker was performed in London at the Gate Theatre (London) in 1990 under the direction of Stephen Daldry (assisted by Kevin Knight) with Set Design by Ian MacNeil (scenic designer) with Stevan Rimkus (as JR) and Anton Horowitz as Bert. Jerker has subsequently been considered "one of the most important pieces of gay theater ever created". [2]

Jerker was filmed in 1991, starring Joseph Stachura as J. R. and Tom Wagner as Bert and directed by Hugh Harrison.[ citation needed ]

Jerker returned to the UK in 2019, running at The King's Head Theatre in London. The play was directed by Ben Anderson, with Tom Joyner as J.R. and Tibu Fortes as Bert. [5]

Plot

Two characters, Bert and J.R., exchange a series of sexually explicit telephone calls after connecting through a brief encounter at a bar where they exchange numbers. The highly pornographic content of the first phone calls abate as the men begin to explore other aspects of themselves and each other. In the final scenes J.R. cannot contact Bert because the latter has died from AIDS. J.R. declares his love for his departed friend.

Obscenity controversy

Jerker was at the center of an obscenity controversy shortly after its premiere, when Pacifica Radio affiliate KPFK broadcast excerpts from the play on August 31, 1986. Larry Poland, a Christian minister, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission the next day. Poland claimed to have tuned into the broadcast accidentally and, upon hearing it, claimed that it "did violence to [him] and [his] family." He continued, "They potentially took away my control of being able to protect my children from learning about certain sexual practices at certain times in their lives." Chesley responded, "Prudery kills, on the radio or anywhere else.... Nobody ever died from being offended by what they see or hear." [6]

The FCC ruled that the broadcast was indecent and possibly obscene. [7] The FCC sanctioned the station [2] and implemented new, more stringent broadcast indecency guidelines. [8]

Notes

  1. ↑ Clum, pp. 59–61
  2. 1 2 3 4 Breslauer, Jan (August 6, 2006). "Drawing more out of 'Jerker'". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  3. ↑ Shewey, Don (June 21, 1987). "AIDS on Stage: Comfort, Sorrow, Anger". The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
  4. ↑ O'Hara, p. 209
  5. ↑ "Press Release - Jerker". kingsheadtheatre. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  6. ↑ quoted in Witt, et al., p. 126
  7. ↑ Wolf, et al., p. 214
  8. ↑ Jones, Alex S (June 6, 1987). "F.C.C. Letter Offers Clarification on New Indecency Rules for Radio". The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2009.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fisting</span> Sex act

Fisting—also known as fist fucking (FF), handballing, and brachiovaginal or brachioproctic insertion—is a sexual activity that involves inserting one or more hands into the vagina or rectum. Fisting may be performed on oneself (self-fisting) or performed on one person by another. People who engage in fisting are often called "fisters".

A shock jock is a radio broadcaster or DJ who entertains listeners and attracts attention using humor and/or melodramatic exaggeration that may offend some portion of the listening audience. The term is used pejoratively to describe provocative or irreverent broadcasters whose mannerisms, statements and actions are typically offensive to much of society. It is a popular term within the radio industry. A shock jock is the radio equivalent of the tabloid newspaper in that both consider entertaining readers to be as important as, if not more important than, providing factual information. A radio station that relies primarily on shock jocks for programming has what is called a hot talk format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gay bathhouse</span> Commercial space for male-male sex

A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath, is a public bath targeted towards gay and bisexual men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", or "the tubs". Historically, they have been used for sexual activity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bareback (sexual act)</span> Sexual penetration without the use of a condom

Bareback sex is physical sexual activity, especially sexual penetration, without the use of a condom. The topic primarily concerns anal sex between men without the use of a condom, and may be distinguished from unprotected sex because bareback sex denotes the deliberate act of forgoing condom use.

KPFK is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California, United States, which serves Southern California, and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet. It was the second of five stations in the non-commercial, listener-sponsored Pacifica Foundation network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glory hole</span> Hole in a wall or partition to engage in sexual activities

A glory hole is a hole in a wall or partition, often between public lavatory cubicles or sex video arcade booths and lounges, for people to engage in sexual activity or observe the person on the opposite side.

<i>Family Guy</i> controversies Public criticism of the American adult animated sitcom

The American adult animated sitcom Family Guy has been the target of numerous taste and indecency complaints. The show is known to include offensive jokes including racial humor and violent, gory, and disturbing images.

Robert Chesley was a playwright, theater critic and musical composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott O'Hara</span> American poet

Scott O'Hara was an American pornographic performer, author, poet, editor and publisher. He rose to prominence during the mid-1980s for his work in such gay adult films as Winner Takes All, Below The Belt and In Your Wildest Dreams. O'Hara wrote four books: SeXplorers: The Guide to Doing It on the Road, Do It Yourself Piston Polishing , Autopornography: A Memoir of Life in the Lust Lane, and Rarely Pure and Never Simple: Selected Essays of Scott O'Hara, and edited and published the quarterly men's sex journal Steam and the cultural magazine Wilde.

<i>Boys in the Sand</i> 1971 film by Wakefield Poole

Boys in the Sand is a landmark American gay pornographic film, released early in the Golden Age of Porn. The 1971 film was directed by Wakefield Poole and stars Casey Donovan. It was the first gay porn film to include credits and to be reviewed by the film industry journal Variety, and one of the earliest porn films – after Andy Warhol's 1969 film Blue Movie, but preceding 1972's Deep Throat – to gain mainstream credibility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phone sex</span> Telephone conversation describing sex activities

Phone sex is a conversation between two or more people by means of the telephone which is sexually explicit and is intended to provoke sexual arousal in one or more participants. As a practice between individuals temporarily separated, it is as old as dial telephones, on which no operator could eavesdrop. In the later 20th century businesses emerged offering, for a fee, sexual conversations with a phone sex worker.

An adult movie theater is a euphemistic term for a movie theater dedicated to the exhibition of pornographic films.

Michael Shernoff was an American openly gay psychotherapist who specialized in serving the mental health needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people and was author of several influential publications on the topics of HIV/AIDS prevention and the mental health concerns of gay men.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gay pornography</span> Pornography depicting sex acts between males

Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity between males. Its primary goal is sexual arousal in its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; which at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornography directed toward heterosexual female, homosexual male and bisexual audiences of any gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Kearns (actor)</span> American dramatist

Michael Kearns is an American actor, writer, director, teacher, producer, and activist. He is noted for being one of the first openly gay actors, and after an announcement on Entertainment Tonight in 1991, the first openly HIV-positive actor in Hollywood. Kearns attended the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles in 1972, where he has maintained a successful mainstream film and television career alongside an extensive theatrical involvement for over 25 years. He has been actively engaged in the Los Angeles art and political communities, incorporating activism into his theater works. Kearns co-founded Artists Confronting AIDS in 1984 and is a current commissioner of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

Sex Panic!, sometimes rendered SexPanic! or Sex Panic, was a sexual activism group founded in New York City in 1997. The group characterized itself as a "pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-racist direct action group" campaigning for sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. It was founded to oppose both mainstream political measures to control sex, and elements within the gay community who advocated same-sex marriage and the restriction of public sexual culture as solutions to the HIV crisis. The group has been depicted as a faction in a gay "culture war" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kurt Marshall</span> American actor and model

Kurt Marshall was a model and an actor who performed in gay pornographic films in the mid-1980s. Although he appeared in only four films, the gay pornographic industry trade publication Unzipped named him one of the top 100 gay porn stars of all time in 2006, author Leigh Rutledge listed him as the ninth most influential gay porn star of all time in 2000, and adult film magazine editor John Erich called him one of the "most beautiful" gay adult film stars of the 1980s.

Federal Communications Commission fines of <i>The Howard Stern Show</i>

Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued fines totaling $2.5 million to radio licensees for airing material it deemed indecent from The Howard Stern Show, the highest amount of any American radio show. The Supreme Court had provided broadcasting guidelines for indecent material in its 1978 ruling in its landmark decision, in which the court prohibited the "seven dirty words" made famous by comedian George Carlin. The FCC had received complaints about Howard Stern as early as 1981, but its limited power at the time prevented further action taking place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Griffith (activist)</span> American gay activist (1959–2012)

Darrell Keith Griffith was an American gay activist, pornographic film producer, writer, and webmaster. He was known for "courageously steering the gay rights movement beyond the bounds of traditional political and legal response to threats to the community's civil rights," and for operating a seminal and popular website for sexual assignation, cruisingforsex.com.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.